


When we fall from orbit

by fractions



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jealousy, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractions/pseuds/fractions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Clint, the hardest part about becoming an Avenger is sharing <i>Natasha</i> with four other people. The sort of “them against the world” mentality that they’d shared for years has changed, which would be good if he wasn’t so damn attached to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When we fall from orbit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: Clint and Natasha are in an ambiguous kind of open relationship, but Clint gets jealous of Bruce and Steve because she's nicer to them than to him. He demands they define the relationship once and for all. Preferably angsty or dramatic rather than fluffy/sappy.
> 
> [From the Clint_Hawkeye Comment Fic Meme](http://clint-hawkeye.livejournal.com/8075.html)

For Clint, the hardest part about becoming an Avenger is sharing his life with four other people; Natasha doesn’t count, because she’s been around for a while, long enough for him to be comfortable with her, long enough that what’s his is hers, really. Like some kind of fucked up marriage, only it’s nothing so concrete. Since Budapest, what they have has become even more undefined, but he knows he’s not supposed to care. He’s not supposed to _want_ her, not supposed to want to keep her to himself, not supposed to want to label her, not supposed to want to label _them_.

Oh, fuck it.

For Clint, the hardest part about becoming an Avenger is sharing _Natasha_ with four other people. The sort of “them against the world” mentality that they’d shared for years has changed, which would be good if he wasn’t so damn attached to it. Now that they don't have that to drive them together, what's left, other than a couple of nights in Budapest that she didn’t seem to remember and he couldn’t seem to forget? They're bound now by this "Avengers Initiative" and bound by their new floors in Stark Towers (his on the top floor, hers just one below) and…there is nothing anymore that is just theirs, his and hers, because they are all, all six of them, bound by the same things. 

And he thinks he’s losing her, that’s what it really comes down to, and he’s weak for letting it twist in his heart like it does. He watches her share laughs and smiles with the others—with Steve and Bruce especially. Thor and Tony have their girlfriends (notice the label, how it is allowed for them but he could never ask it of Natasha; _Girlfriend_ , she’d scoff and turn away from him, because she always ran away from things she couldn’t bear), and maybe it’s just that he’s not threatened by them.

But when he sees her smile with Steve, hears her laugh echoing the halls from Bruce’s lab, it is then that he realizes how long it’s been since he’s been on the receiving end of that smile, that laugh. She stayed with him on his floor for a week after the battle. She held him through his nightmares, she laid kisses on his eyelids ( _Clint-blue_ , she’d whisper, _never Loki-blue, never again_ ), she served as intermediary between he and the others who frequented the tower, between he and S.H.I.E.L.D., always saying _It wasn’t you_ , always saying _No one blames you_.

Natasha gets bored with things easily, especially broken things, and recently she is on his floor less and less. He is forced to interact with the others, and maybe that’s a blessing, but he’s not okay with losing her in exchange for four new friends. And just when he thinks he can leave, just when he thinks he can heal or he can escape or he can…and then she’s there with skin so heated he shivers, and then she's pushing him toward his bed and putting him together again.

He wakes in the morning and she’s gone, always gone, always smiling with Steve, laughing with Bruce, always just scant warmth lingering in his bed, and he thinks he loves her.

*

He makes it to his room, and she’s there before him, always before him, and she pushes him back into the doorframe, and he presses his palms to her shoulders and holds her away from him. Her eyes are wild and deep _Natasha-green_ , and she backs away with a huff through flared nostrils.

“What?” she asks.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he says, and it’s cliché and he knows it; next he’ll be saying something like _it’s not you, it’s me_ , and maybe it’s true, that it’s just him now, not her. 

“Oh yeah?” she answers like he’s challenging her.

He takes a step toward her. “What _are_ we, Natasha?” 

Her eyebrow jumps to her hairline; her hands are balled and clutched to her sides. Defensive. “We?”

“You and I. Are we…a couple?” He doesn’t know how to say it, how to ask or how to take it all back.

She barks a short laugh (not a Bruce-laugh, or what was once a Clint-laugh). “A couple. Well, yes, _a couple_ of master assassins, I heard someone say once.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. You want me to be your Pepper? Your Jane?”

“I—I want—” He can’t find the words because he doesn’t know what he wants, didn’t expect her to ask because he knows she doesn’t really care what he wants; she already knows, she always knows. 

“Your _girlfriend_?” She spits the word just like he’d imagined.

“I want you,” he gets out, “to be my—my, just mine. I want you to be mine,” he finally finishes, and the air is still and hanging with something like electricity.

She holds his gaze and steps toward him, puts her hand on his cheek and runs her index finger down his jawline. He leans into her touch; his eyes flutter closed and when he opens them, she’s smiling, a real smile, a Steve-smile, or what used to be a Clint-smile and, maybe, just maybe, it is again. 

*

In the morning she’s gone. He hears her laugh from breakfast where she sits between Steve and Bruce, and she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t smile at him, and certainly, _certainly_ does not belong to him.


End file.
